Musings of a Wayward Yeti

Saturday, July 20, 2013

Jury finds that Zimmerman was sent from the future to prevent us from making Watchmen real

By Barbara Holm

Tensions were running high when the Florida neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman made his first court appearance. Zimmerman is on trial for murdering a seventeen year old boy named Trayvon Martin.

Reportedly, Zimmerman was a self appointed neighborhood vigilante, and followed the young boy on his way home and then shot him for seemingly no reason. It’s a very sensitive case with a lot of emotions at stake, but after much deliberation and listening to both the prosecution and the defense, the jury came to the clear conclusion that Zimmerman was sent from the future to prevent us from making the graphic novel Watchmen real.

Reportedly, according to a lot of science, George Zimmerman was sent from a not too distant future to warn us what could happen if society encouraged human beings to assume the identities of crime fighting vigilantes, and remind us that some human beings are intrinsically horrible.

“Aghlepspheblagh!” yells Alan Moore who lives in a hut on the foot of a mountainside.

Unsure of how to send Zimmerman back to his current time, scientists are working on the mechanics of interdimensional time travel whilst social scientists are working on how to not let racist assholes who live in the suburbs of Florida pretend that they’re some sort of crime fighters.

“You can’t just be a policeman,” says anyone who’s ever paid attention to anything. “You have to take some sort of test, oh, and um, promise not to shoot to death innocent children, yeah, that’d help.”

Ultimately as tragic and intense as this whole ordeal has been, the Martin trial has done its job in warning us not to turn into a society that could pin a badge on the neighborhood gun hungry watch dog and furthermore inspired science fiction nerds to pay attention to the news.

Wednesday, July 3, 2013

"In his State of the Union Address, President Bush announced a new initiative to keep young people out of gangs, a new program called Do Right And Follow Through (D.R.A.F.T.)." --Tina Fey

"Condoleezza Rice made a surprise trip to Iraq on Sunday. Also surprised to be in Iraq on Sunday: thousands of U.S. troops who were supposed to be home by Christmas." --Amy Poehler

"Tom DeLay's mug shot was released on Thursday. Even creepier, it was taken while he watched someone drown a bag of kittens." --Amy Poehler

"While trying to defend his nomination of Harriet Miers, President Bush admitted he and Miers had never discussed abortion. Said Bush, 'Luckily it turned out to be a false alarm.'" --Amy Poehler

"Last week, the city of Boston sparked controversy when it renamed the giant spruce tree in Boston Common a holiday tree instead of a Christmas tree. Also, the city's nativity scene will now be referred to as the Holiday Homeless Family." --Tina Fey

"A new poll reveals that 56% of Americans believe that Wal-Mart is bad for the country, while the other 44% work there." --Amy Poehler

"To show that his energy bill is about more than drilling for oil in Alaska. This week President Bush visited a plant in Virginia that turned soy beans into a clean burning diesel fuel. Which the president hopes one day will be used to fuel oil drilling machines in Alaska " --Tina Fey

"California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's popularity has been slipping in recent months as residents slowly begin to realize they elected Arnold Schwarzenegger to be their governor." --Tina Fey

"It was reported that House Majority Leader Tom DeLay took several ethically questionable golf trips paid for by foreign lobbyists and that his wife and daughter were paid $500,000 from his own political action committee. DeLay referred to the allegations as 'just another seedy attempt by the liberal media to embarrass me with my own actions words and illegal doings.'" --Tina Fey

"It's been reported that in the event of an emergency situation with North Korea the U.S. is prepared to send 70% of the Marine Corps to the region. According to President Bush this will still allow us to send another 70% to Iran and keep our other 70% in Iraq." --Tina Fey

"A leading Republican said Sunday that President Bush is so worried about Social Security that he is only able to sleep ten hours a night." --Tina Fey

Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Since starting stand up I have had men scream at me that I deserve to get raped, I have had men call me a bitch, cunt, and slut and I have had men clumsily kiss me against my will and then I threw up on them. Since starting stand up I am in a constant state of guilt and anxiety about being around human people socially and in big groups. Since starting stand up, I have been emotionally, physically, and psychologically exhausted. And in that constant state of unhealthy mental attitude, my self esteem is hovering around negative a bzillion. The stress of constantly failing at something I love so much has made my bulimia worse.

The problem isn't that I don't like stand up. It's that if anything I love it TOO much. Stand up saved/saves my life over and over again. I think it is the most beautiful and pure art form. I have never felt like I fit in before I started doing it. Ever since the first time I did stand up I felt like I was at home. And my heart is broken because I don't think I'm good enough to deserve it.

Every time I get heckled, lose a competition, fail an audition, it's just another message that I'm not built for this. I can write and work all day long, but at the end of the day I'm not naturally funny. My greatest fear is that comedy is an ingrained gift, an inherrent ability, not a just an aquired skillset, and that I just simply don't have it. I feel like I'm offending an art form whenever I go on stage. I feel like it's inexcusable for me to respect the beauty of stand up so much and then constantly go on stage and blasphemize the art.

I feel like being a comedian is like being a unicorn, something magical you're born. And I'm just a dumb horse with a cone taped to my head.

It's so heart breaking to even consider quitting. And I know that I can't be the kind of comic that fades out gradually because I would feel too guilty if I took a break or took time off and then went up and dissappointed an audience by being rusty. I try to think of the one audience member in the crowd who is having a horrible day, maybe got her heart broken, maybe needs to laugh. I can't let her down.

I don't think I can be a comedy club comic. I can't inspire confidence and boom with authority, bravado and charisma. I get heckled a lot. I worry that I'm just intrinsically unlikeable. Like it's not my jokes, it's me the audience detests. I don't think I can act. I'm already 26, not a size 0, short, and not pretty or loveable. I don't know if I'm smart enough to be a writer. So where do I belong? Where do I fit in as an artist?

But I don't think I can give up.

Recently I got an email from someone telling me how much my comedy meant to them. I keep trying to remind myself that if I bomb or get heckled or slut shamed or cyber bullied or if I get rejected for one show or job, even if 40 people in the crowd hate me and want me to kill myself, maybe one person loves me. And I love that one person back. And I should keep doing stand up for her, right?

I probably can't live without stand up. I think I need to do it.

But, lately I've been going up in characters, still doing my own material talking about anxieties and feeling like an outsider and depression and feminism... but from the perspective of a character because I hate being Barbara so much. I think I'm so unlikeable, unloveable, so offensively cruel that I ruin people's nights with my personality.

A long time ago I read an article by Charlyne Yi where she said, "If you never perform again no one cares but you." (SIC, I can't find the original essay.)

I know that if I quit, no one will care but me. Well, that's not true, a lot of people will be happier if I quit. (All the misogynists) But overall, me doing or not doing stand up will not affect the landscape of the art form whatsoever. However, it'll kill me not to do it. I'll diminish in power like Galadriel. And if I can never quit, then I can't take breaks, can I? That's not fair to the audience.

Why do I love stand up? Because it's fun for me to do? No. It is fun for me to kill, but I hate bombing. I love the writing aspect. I love laughing. I love performing. I love the feeling I get when I can make someone laugh really hard, like they can't control it. I love working and growing and developing my comedy voice like it's a magic power I'm strengthening. I love being able to take something horrible and sad and take the power away from it by writing a funny weird whimsical punchline. I love the jokes I've written. I love the voice I'm growing into. I love stand up.

I keep waiting for someone to tell me I belong in this art form. But that'll never happen. No one will ever tell me that. I have to want to belong in it. AND I DO WANT TO BELONG IN IT. But I don't know if I deserve to.

Tuesday, June 11, 2013

"Do you want a coffee?" I asked softly, looking up at his face, watching his sparkling blue yes glow with energy.
"Yeah, I'll go get one."
"I'll get it for you," I offered, half standing up.
"No."

He used to let me buy his coffee for him. He didn't this time. He stood up and walked to the counter, taking his messenger bag with him. I'm not sure why he took it with him. I would have watched it. Maybe he thought I would look through it. I wouldn't have. I guess it wasn't important. While he was at the counter I practiced counting, forgot to breathe, became conscious of the fact that I wasn't breathing, started to freak out, and then he returned. I don't know if I started breathing then or forgot about it.

"D-d-did you just get a drip coffee?" I asked.
"Yeah." He sat down.
"I thought you used to drink lattes."
"I used to."
"Oh."

We used to do alot of things. I used to do a lot of things. I tried to remember them. When I was little I used to pick up rocks, take a picture of them, and collect those pictures, because I didn't want to collect the rocks. I liked rocks. I liked parts of the earth that never seemed to die. One time I did a huge easter egg hunt and I picked up eggs. There were hundreds of other children. It was for some big community party. It was supposed to be a competition, who could collect the most eggs. I had cried when I lost. My parents don't remember this.

"So, what is new?" I asked.
"Nothing. Just, you know, trying to not kill myself," he said. He pushed his glasses up his impossibly handsome nose. He wouldn't make eye contact. I thirsted for his smile.
"No, don't say that...." I spoke so softly I barely made noise. I cleared my throat but no more noise came out.
"Fine. I won't talk."
"No, that's not what I'm saying! Please talk to me! I-I'm so lonely and I need someone to talk to me."
"Well what do you want me to say?"
"Anything."
"Jesus."

I remember the easter egg hunt had been at a golf course. My parents dressed me up in a pretty pink fluffy dress for Easter. When I was running through the trees I pretended I was a fairy or an elf or a nymph picking up magickal stones for a spell I needed. Maybe they were crystals. I still like those things but I have to pretend like it's ironic or quirky and not like at 26 I still genuinely really want to be a wood nymph.

"So, how is um... Allysa?" I asked.
"No."
"What?"
"We're not talking about my girlfriend," he said. "Leave her alone."
"I wasn't... I didn't..."

I had been six. I had picked up a small stone that was a pale peach color. I thought it was an egg. I put it in my baskett. I wasn't smart enough to notice the weight difference. I thought it was from a chicken, or a duck, or anything. Rock didn't cross my mind. Yay, another egg! I ran towards the finish line.

"I don't have to deal with this," he said.
"I'm sorry! No! Please stay and talk to me!"
"I have nothing to say to you." He picked up his messenger bag, left his coffee, still full but cold now, and got up.
"Please!"
"No."

When I got to the finish line the adult man in a suit with bunny ears was counting the eggs. He took them one by one out of the basketts and wrote the numbers down on a piece of paper. When he got to me he picked up the rock.

"Young lady, this is a rock," he said.
I said nothing back.
"You were trying to cheat."
I shook my head no. I started crying.
"You're officially disqualified."

He walked out the door without a word, faster than he normall walked, faster than he normally used to walk anway. I don't know if anyone else in the coffee shop was watching or cared.

The adult man in a suit and bunny ears dropped my baskett of eggs to the earth at my six year old feet. I picked up my peachy pink rock. I thought about throwing it into his head. I imagined hurling it with all of my might. I envisioned it going deep into his skull and blood and brains oozing out onto his crisp white shirt, splattering his salt and pepper hair and pink bunny ears with deep maroon. I imagined a gush of squirting red blood everywhere. I let the rock fall to the ground. I smoothed my pink easter dress and ran off into the woods.

I watched him go out the door into the sunlight, take his phone out of his pocket and start texting. He didn't look back at me. I cried silently in the brightly lit room.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The grey light flooded the busy street as cars raced by Jenny. The sun was setting and she knew legally soon she would have to turn her lights on. She kept her focus in front of her, trying to maintain alertness, but wobbling nervously. It had been years since she had ridden a bike. People kept telling her, "Don't worry, you'll remember, it's just like riding a bi-" and she interrupted "because no one ever taught me and I'm scared of it? Nope that's love. Love is like riding a bike. And riding a bike is like riding a bike. That's the problem."

When her friend Sarah had given her her old bike, Jenny took it mostly because she was so happy that she had a friend at all, someone who felt close enough with her to do that. The bike was a symbol, and she was gonna ride the fuck outta that metaphor. Jenny loved having girlfriends and she seemed to have a hard time keeping them, because most of them were musicians or artists and after a few years of friendship they moved to New York or LA and she only saw them a few times a year. Jenny wondered if something was wrong with her that her friendships seemed short lived. She felt guilty that she worried she was hurting the people she loved so dearly, pushing them away. She never wanted to do that to Sarah. But the truth was was that she just happened to be friends with very driven ambitious artists. And maybe one day she too could fall into that category, but not anytime in the near future, not with her fears, not with the anxiety that haunted her life, not with her sickness.

A car honked at her, for seemingly no reason, her green sundress flew up over her jeans as she pedaled her pink bike. the street was really busy today with some quirky nudist parade, and she motioned to turn down a less crowded street. She had had to look up the turn signals for the bike. It turned out they were pretty self explanatory, left hand, right hand, crying and shaking, etcetera.

As Jenny turned, her bike got caught in the track grooves where the light rail was supposed to travel. The bike, which was probably going thirty miles per hour tipped over, and Jenny fell on her right side, twisting her foot underneath her, against the angle foots are supposed to go. She fell hard onto the street, amongst the busy cars, which just drove around her, honking.

Embarrassed, Jenny quicky jumped up, grabbed her bike, and wheeled it to the side of the street. She snapped her ankle back into place, and climbed back on her bike, tightened her helmet, and continued riding. That hadn't been that scary. She had been so afraid of falling down and as it turned out, it wasn't that bad at all. She could survive it. She was okay.

But why was she okay?

She pulled her bike over and felt her ankle. She had just snapped it back into place instinctually. It wasn't hurt or swelling or broken. She ran her hands over her muscles. Nothing felt like it would be bruised later... She was fine, too fine. She had healed immediately. Her body felt strong, athletic, capable, and almost hungry.

Jenny looked up at the sky and squinted through the dark rain clouds. The sun was setting now. She looked at her phone and scrolled through the calender. She stopped short when she realized her mistake. She had forgotten to factor in the extra day in February this year. Tonight was the night, not tomorrow. She hopped back on her little pink bike with it's wobbly basket and turned backwards. There was no time to call or text her friends and tell them the miscalculation. And if there had been, she couldn't have devised a ruse or cover fast enough.

She biked back towards her house as fast as she could, which in her current state, was faster than cars. Her pony tail flapped against her back shoulders, feeling longer, more luscious than it had been this morning, a mane of dark thick health, blowing behind her. Her muscles rippled with a violent animistic strength. That was good. If only she could get back home in time to where the chains and handcuffs were. The last thing she wanted was to hurt anyone, to claw their soft skin, to expose their juicy, spicy hot blood- no, she pushed these thoughts from her head.

Jenny wasn't far from home now. She had almost made it before the darkness took her over.

Just then the cop lights and siren flooded her awareness. It couldn't be happening. She was being pulled over. Jenny slowed down, stopped, and put her shoulda been broken ankled foot down. The cop came up to her. He was young, kind looking. He had a beard. He had a wedding ring. No.

"Sorry, miss, to have to do this, but do you have bike lights?"
"Fuck."
"Maybe in your bag? You forgot to..."
"Run," Jenny choked out.
"'Scuse me?"

If Jenny had been her normal self she would have sobbed with guilt, but instead the frustrated feeling of shame only burned inside her like a fire. Her nails were growing. Her teeth felt strong. Her eyesight sharpened. She looked up and squinted through the clouds.

The moon rose over the mountains, thick, full, laughing at her, cackling at her pain, her violent anger and painful crippling guilt that she would have to live with, her inability to ever have a life, friends, family, love, or hope. This would be her burden, her curse, for the rest of her life, to be so isolated by her own darkness, so completely alone in her miserable monstrous fate. She loved so deeply, and that was the worst part of her existence.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Minnesota book club leader Beatrice Johnson was apprehended by authorities yesterday. Reportedly, she dashed into the midst of traffic, stared at a SUV for a moment, and then placed her palm up towards the oncoming vehicle. She squinted her eyes and furrowed her brow. Thirty year old Johnson stood in the way of a collision with her hand out and was saved at the last second by a passing pedestrian. Beatrice claimed that she had been disoriented and had thought she could slow the car with her mind.

The woman had spent the last three weeks reading The Hunger Games, Twilight, and concluded the showerless trek of time with the Harry Potter series. She had ingested so much fantasy into her mind that she now thought it real.

“It’s quite common,” said Dr. Polowski, a specialist in fantasy literature’s effect on the psyche of lonely people. “These kids, or adults in increasing cases, read the books for over ten hours a day, and then they think that they exist in the rules set up in that fictional universe.”

For example, in Georgia earlier this week a woman thought she was the girl with the dragon tattoo, so it could have been worse.

“I just....” stuttered poor Beatrice. “I was reading fantasy for about five hours and I just was so absorbed into the storyline that when I came out of it, I thought I had powers for a little while. It’s not a big deal. Calm down.”

“This is getting out of control,” said therapist Steven Tyler. “Fans of fantasy everywhere are losing their grip on reality. A man in Oregon thinks we have a half black president.”

Reportedly, the lonelier a reader is, the easier it is to lose themselves in children’s fantasy literature. The results of this study are sponsored by a party display store that specializes in Edward Cullen costumes.

Fans of fantasy novels everywhere are beginning to lose themselves into escapism and forgetting how the rules of reality works. It’s charming when it’s a ten year old who thinks she’s going to find love someday, but it’s almost dangerous when it’s a thirty year old who believes in telekinesis.

In the epoch of giant trucks and hummers, we enter a science fiction esque frenzy over the depletion of natural resources, the effects of carbon emissions on the atmosphere, and the greenhouse effect. Gas prices are skyrocketing due to the dwindling supply of fossil fuels and gas guzzlers are desperate. Scientists all over the planet are searching for an alternative to fossil fuels and one Swedish scientist thinks she may have discovered a never ending, renewable supply of energy: unbridled loathing.

“It was quite simple once I thought about it,” said Dr. Serena Grendle. “We needed something dark and disgustingly sludgy to put in our vehicles, something society could dependently rely on, and humanity has an endless supply of unconditional hatred.”

“It’s really a genius idea,” said Grendle’s colleague, the not at all bitter and jealous Dr. Sven. “She is extracting the energy people spend hating others, and converting that into power we can use to fuel basically anything.”

Using a mechanism like a breast pump, Grendle is now frequenting the DMV, corporate offices, and family reunions to suck the loathing out of others. Reportedly hatred will be very cheap to produce, manufacture and market due to its already obvious popularity. This technology will be available in the next ten years, according to scientific estimates.

Some academics raise concern, however, that while this will help with dwindling supplies and shortages, it will do nothing to reduce carbon emissions and reverse greenhouse effects. Reportedly, unbridled loathing creates almost worst emissions for the atmosphere than gasoline and will speed up global warming quite a lot. Human beings are not sure yet if this is a benefit or a drawback.

The green grass of the basketball court glistens with sweat
and the dew of the morning. The crowd roars with noises as they cram enough people
in one arena to induce a demophobia attack. Reportedly, across
the world, sports are still being played.

Soccer, baseball, cricket, football, American football,
swimming, and more are currently being practiced and perfected. At this very
moment, a child is being driven to a little league practice somewhere, sobbing
in the backseat, despite the fact that dad already told him/her to buck up.

“Yeah, it’s still going on,” grumbled grizzled Coach Johnson
from under his handlebar mustache. “We got a match next week against Liberty.
It could determine whether we go to state or not this year.”

Surprising to some, sports also continue on a professional
level. Athletes make millions of dozens of dollars while an audience of people
watches. Invested emotionally in the game, the crowd paints their faces,
dresses, and even dances in humiliating ways to show their support.

“A sport,” explained professional basketball player David
Steve, “is a competitive activity based on sweating that usually involves rules
such as ‘out of bounds.’ Often a sport relies on a point system.”

In addition to the livelihood of the athletes, sports have
also spawned a vast industry of employment for out of work cheerleaders, peanut
salesmen, and foam finger factory workers.

“It’s great,” said professional cheerleader Stephanie.
“Before this I was cheering on the street for change. And these uniform skirts
are pretty much dry clean only.”

Despite the delight of the fans and the benefit to the
economy, the continuation of sports has been met with some criticism. “One time
a jock knocked the books out of my hands!” said a grown up adult who never got
over the teasing of Bobby Hanson in eighth grade.

Lindsay Lohan Switches Back into her Body After Being Trapped in that of her Childhood Doll for Ten Years

Lindsay Lohan’s eyes fluttered open yesterday morning. Upon gaining consciousness of wakefulness, the twenty five year old actress immediately was screaming in terror. Her boyfriend (who sleeps in a cot in the closet) rushed into her bedroom to check on her. She shrank away from his comforting arms and shook her head in panicked confusion, knocking pictures off the wall as she shook her ten pounds of yellow hair.

“How did I get here?” She gasped before fainting.

Experts and scientists deduced that after ten years of being trapped inside her childhood doll’s, the body swap must have run its course and the real Lindsay had returned to her body.

“It’s like nothing we’ve seen before,” said Dr. Willard, body swap scientist who was in fact inspired to take up the career by Lohan’s performance on Freaky Friday. “Usually when someone swaps bodies, to switch back they have to learn an important lesson about empathy or love, or get almost killed to death by lightning. In this case, it seems that the universe simply gave up and returned Lohan to her original body.”

Clutching her newfound woman breasts, Lohan recounted, “It was so weird. I was just a living in my parents house, and pursuing my childhoold dream of acting. And then one day I wake up and I’m sitting on a shelf where I put my doll Cassandra, watching everything through her glass marble eyes.”

Scientists deduce that while Lohan was trapped in a porcelain body, the doll was in her own fifteen year old flesh, walking around, going to auditions, enjoying parties, and tanning the freckles away. The doll in Lohan’s body moved out of her parent’s home, leaving its old vessel behind. Lohan’s parents left her room the way it was, but didn’t venture in often, so she was stuck staring into space, trapped in the doll’s body, and screaming silently in her head for almost half her life.

Now that she is back in her original body, no one knows what lies in store for the once adorable star of the Parent Trap, but one thing’s for sure, she’s going to destroy that fricking doll with a hammer.

For years the economy has
suffered worldwide, but finally reports show that we’re turning a corner. Some
of the cobwebs and dust is being gradually brushed off the shop countertops. A
few interested customers and some uninterested ones are lingering in front of
window displays. According to recent studies, the economy is definitely showing
improvement in the industry of wish granting and curses.

After a drastic drop in
spending, stocks and data numbers have finally taken a marked upward trend in
the dark arts. In the last month there has been a 14% increase in consumer
spending, according to local gypsies and shamans.

“For years there would only
be the occasional weekly customer,” said local amateur wizard Jennifer Smith.
“Like someone who really needed to curse their office administrator. You know:
an emergency. But now it’s like every day there’s a new client coming into the
shack and begging to have a wish granted. People are desperate again. It’s
wonderful!”

Reportedly there is an
increase in new clients searching for magical antidotes and also a rise in the
frequency with which regular customers are utilizing these services.

Experts speculate that the
rise in interest in wish granting and curses may be correlated to the extreme
terror and misery that is sweeping the planet. Wishes and curses scientist
Brady Joe said that it is a common trend. “The public realizes that everything
is meaningless and we’re all spiraling downward into an inevitable doom and
then suddenly they want to wish to go on a date with Alex from marketing.”

Witch doctors and magical
retailers everywhere are happy with the apparent influx of demand. Subsequently
this has a positive effect creating more positions in the factories for elves
on the production level. The economy has apparently taken a turn for the
better, but some industry professionals wonder how long this will last.

“We don’t really know where
we’ll be in a year,” said Jennifer Smith from under her starry pointed wizard
hat, hugging her small son to her robed waist. “But for now, I can afford to
get little Timmy shoes without holes in them.”